[maverickronin]

Quote:

Hmm why not ? And what would you say could affect the sound in a cable? And yeah poorly shielded cables would degrade sound quality for sure but what other points you say matter more than being a copper or silver cable?

 
RLC

 

[bigshot]

Now according to the guy I talked to, he explained to me that some of the high end cables for example are made out of pure silver or the best quality copper. Both these materials have different characteristics when passing through frequences that really can slightly change the sound of the actual headphone.

I'll bet you five bucks the pro you spoke to worked in consumer electronics and not the recording industry. (How do I know that?? Wow! Must be ESP!)

 

[Hoax]

Quote:

I'll bet you five bucks the pro you spoke to worked in consumer electronics and not the recording industry. (How do I know that?? Wow! Must be ESP!)

Yeah he did lol.. But after he told me this and i digged some deeper i saw tons of sites where audiophiles were discussing cables and where people were recommending specific brands to go for if you want "that type of sound" using a type of cable that was made out of copper or silver .. So this is all wrong then? I dont know much about this stuff other than what people tell me and what I read .. The only thing I could do is try for myself I guess, dont really feel the need to do so though
 
anyways, thanks for the info guys

 

[bigshot]

Yes, that info is wrong. The reason people say that is they want you to spend a lot of money on cables, because there is a huge markup on them. Audiophiles repeat what salesmen have told them, and it just confuses things more.

If you want to not spend money you don't need to, you need to be an educated consumer.

 

[mikeaj]

Quote:

 
RLC

 
A lot of the objections come from misapplication of transmission line theory (which is more accurate and appropriate for some purposes), not just the usual lumped-element model analysis as in the link on RLC circuits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line
 
At audio frequencies at typical hookup distances, like for interconnect cables, those effects are trivial and can be ignored.  In general this can be ignored for audio purposes.  Sometimes for some specific purposes you need to be a little bit more careful though.
 
Anyway, you can try for yourself if you're interested.

 

[maverickronin]

Quote:

A lot of the objections come from misapplication of transmission line theory (which is more accurate and appropriate for some purposes), not just the usual lumped-element model analysis as in the link on RLC circuits.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transmission_line
 
At audio frequencies at typical hookup distances, like for interconnect cables, those effects are trivial and can be ignored.  In general this can be ignored for audio purposes.  Sometimes for some specific purposes you need to be a little bit more careful though.
 
Anyway, you can try for yourself if you're interested.

 
Yeah, they're usually to small to have any effect.  You can make them matter in standard audio cables if you really try of just screw something up but what I meant is that if there is a difference you'll find it the RLC of the cable and not some sort of sympathetic magic relating to a specific material.
 
Capacitance can matter a lot for electric guitar cables and ICs between phono cartridges and preamps but off the top of my head that's only time and end user would ever have to worry about the electrical properties of the usual pack-in cables not being up to the task.

 

[germanium]

Quote:

 
Yeah, they're usually to small to have any effect.  You can make them matter in standard audio cables if you really try of just screw something up but what I meant is that if there is a difference you'll find it the RLC of the cable and not some sort of sympathetic magic relating to a specific material.
 
Capacitance can matter a lot for electric guitar cables and ICs between phono cartridges and preamps but off the top of my head that's only time and end user would ever have to worry about the electrical properties of the usual pack-in cables not being up to the task.

While it is less sensitive at audio frequencies if you ignore transmission line theory you can not completely ignore it even in audio. The effects of getting it right may seem subtle but I have found that if you get closer to what transmission theory would dictate as correct  it brings new life to music that previously sounded somewhat dulled. The dulling of the sound may appear on the surface to be very mild but the effect on the overall sound especially on piano & electric guitar can be profound when you get closer to what transmission line theory would dictate as correct. Piano & lead electric guitar solos take on a new life that truely gives you the feeling that you are there in the live situation rather than listening to a recording.
 
It is for this reason I have made my own cables, especially when using home audio componants with higher output impedance. Computer soundcards in general do not suffer as much due to having an output impedance that closely matches the characteristic impedance of the cable though some get lopsided the opposite way. Asus cards out thier line out gets fairly close to matching the cables impedance characteristic. When direct couped they take you very close to that live expeience & with minor power supply upgrades will take you all the way. Sound cards are not very sensitive to different cable designes due to thier closer match & as a result you will not hear much if any difference in cable designes with computer soundcards, at least that has been my experience. Home componant audio can suffer quite greatly with the wrong cables I have found. The frequency response will seem to be there but the sound is dulled on piano & electric guitar solos

 

[maverickronin]

I can't say I've ever noticed that but I'm open to new information.
 
Do you have anything more concrete, like some sort of measurements?

 

[nick_charles]

Quote:

I can't say I've ever noticed that but I'm open to new information.
 
Do you have anything more concrete, like some sort of measurements?

+ 1 - or better still measurements correlated with carefully proctored blind tests, it is pretty easy to measure small diffferences in FR in cables but verifying that these differences are audible is a different matter...

 

[Magick Man]

Was reading Stereophile and they were talking about swapping interconnects to "add warmth and smoothness". Seriously, why do I still have a subscription with them?

 

[liamstrain]

Quote:

Seriously, why do I still have a subscription with them?

 
The pretty pictures. 

 

[Magick Man]

Well, it is good for crapper reading.

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

While it is less sensitive at audio frequencies if you ignore transmission line theory you can not completely ignore it even in audio.

 
If you're going to apply transmission line theory at audio frequencies, then your load impedance must also be matched to the line impedance, otherwise, the whole exercise is rather pointless. What good is it to have say, a 100 ohm output impedance driving a 100 ohm line, only to have that line terminated with a 10k ohm load? Are you also modifying your equipment so that their input impedances match the line impedance?
 
And at what frequency are you determining the line's "characteristic impedance"? A cable won't start approaching it's mathematical "characteristic impedance" until you're pretty well out of the audio range. Below that, the cable's impedance continuously rises.
 

se

 

[kiteki]

I see this thread has skillfully returned back to cables.  Ok, well the rest was fun while it lasted!
 

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CAT5e as a speaker cable.
 

 
source:  http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=9a169021bbd958cd122c1385a8c5e9aa&showtopic=14082&st=0, http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=14732
 

Spoiler: commercial%20application%20in%20audio

 
"Use twisted pair wiring, such as you can find inside any CAT5 ethernet cable or similar."
 

 

 
Aha.

 

[maverickronin]

I see you're continuing your wonderful impression of a chatbot which can only associate specific words without understanding the meaning behind them.